I received some buildings from Leven Miniatures who are a relatively new maker of 6mm buildings (when I wrote this). They looked great in the photos and part of the appeal for me is that the building don't come with bases. I prefer this as I think it makes them more flexible how they can be used but the downside is more work on basing is needed (or not). I got these buildings with the intention of making a French style farm or small Chateau.
The materials I used for this project are:
Leven chateau and buildings
Irregular vineyards and gates
Home cast walls and gardens.
K&M popular trees and others
You can replace some of the materials and flock used for this build with what you have available. Although it is a specific build that ideas from this can be used for
similar terrain builds
The first step was to cut up some plasticard and work out a rough layout of the model. I decided to create a 3 piece model so that I could alter the footprint as needed. The buildings are Leven and the walls and gardens are a homemade design and casting.
Once the layout was figured out, the wall and garden pieces were trimmed and glued down and details like gravel and basing was started on. I went with a fine sand to respresent gravel at this scale and it has the added bonus of hiding any gaps between pieces. Alas there are no photos showing the gravel.
In the back section of the chateau a vineyard was created using Irregular's metal vineyard strips. These were laid out and glued down along with a small shed (which I later lost!) Some open space was left so that it would be possble to still put figures and vehicles in there.
While the Leven buildings are great I wanted to make the chateau a little larger and by an amazing concidence I had a textured plasticard which very closely matched the stone work of the chateau. I used a block of foam and glued the plasticard onto the foam and added some windows (made from stamping a shape into greenstuff type putty) and a roof. The roof did not match but it seems common to have different styles incoporated into the same building over time. For the barn a new section was made to help it fit into the area on the base.
The buildings were painted separately and then mounted on the base. I used a thin layer of coloured caulk to texture the base
and hide any gaps around the buildings and walls by pushing them into the caulkwhile it was still wet. I kept it pretty smooth as I would expect it to be a well worn area. The front
part was designed to fit with the garden base so the same gravel was used and I made sure it lined up properly. Also a number of trees were glued into place at this point.
Unfortunately I didnt take any photos of this stage
The flock was a mix of Noch and Woodland scenics. The flock in the flower gardens was some coloured flock mixed with green but after it dried I painted the flock to enhance the colours. Some of it is messy but that makes the garden look overgrown. For the vineyard, flock was added around the bases of the vines and a few pathways were left between gates.
Here's some pictures of the finished buildings. The buildings was given a few brown and green washes to make it look older. For the windows I used a white gel pen to draw the frames and this is much easier than using a paint brush. Once the buildings were painted, it is difficult to see the where the extensions were added and this is a great result.
And some pictures which show some of the the finished details.